North Korea expels BBC news team who 'insulted the country’s dignity'

Authorities in Pyongyang have expelled the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his news team from North Korea, on the grounds of “attacking the DPRK system and non-objective reporting”.

According to BBC News reports, following Wingfield-Hayes’ midweek report on a trip made by Nobel prize laureates to a children’s hospital in North Korea, the BBC correspondent was detained for three days and questioned for eight hours, along with producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard.

O Ryong Il, the secretary general of North Korea’s National Peace Committee said that the team’s “disrespectful” report “spoke ill of the system and the leadership of the country”.

On visiting the children’s hospital, Wingfield-Hayes remarked that the patients looked “remarkably well, and there isn’t a real doctor in sight”. He also commented that “everything we see looks like a set-up.”

According to the BBC’s Seoul correspondent Steve Evans, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, detailed that Wingfield-Hayes was stopped at Pyongyang airport as he attempted to take his scheduled flight from North Korea. He was then questioned at a hotel for eight hours.

“The chief interrogator introduced himself by saying: 'I'm the man who prosecuted Kenneth Bae,'” Evans said. “Kenneth Bae was a missionary who was given 15 years hard labour.”

Wingfield-Hayes was then made to sign a statement by North Korean authorities.

"We are very disappointed that our reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team have been deported from North Korea after the government took offence at material he had filed," said a BBC spokesman.

"Four BBC staff, who were invited to cover the Workers Party Congress, remain in North Korea and we expect them to be allowed to continue their reporting."